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As a major NASA mission begins science operations, former Warren Township and Beach Haven, N.J., resident Edward J. Ingraham can make a rare claim -- that he helped test Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity.

Ingraham, who grew up in Warren Township and spent summers in Beach Haven, graduated from Warren's Watchung Hills Regional High School in 1983. He is a member of NASA's Gravity Probe B team. Also known as GP-B, the experiment will test Einstein's theory that space and time are slightly distorted by the presence of massive objects such as planets and stars.

Based at Stanford University in Stanford, Calif., Ingraham is Gravity Probe B's on-site NASA manager for NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. He has spent more than a decade involved in virtually all facets of the program.

The experiment will measure, very precisely, tiny changes in the direction of spin of four gyroscopes contained in the spacecraft satellite. So free are the gyroscopes from disturbance that they will provide an almost perfect space-time reference system.

These measurements will enable scientists to track two effects -- how space and time are very slightly warped by the presence of the Earth, and how the Earth's rotation very slightly drags space-time around with it.

Einstein proposed the General Theory of Relativity in 1916, approximately 80 years before the advent of technology capable of testing this aspect of his theory.

Gravity Probe B's 12-month science-data acquisition period will be followed by a month post-science period for calibrations. By 2005 the Gravity Probe B mission will be complete, and a one-year period is planned for scientific analysis of the data.

Ingraham has a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Arizona in Tucson, a master's in industrial engineering from Texas A&M University in College Station, and is a graduate of the Advanced Project Management Program at Stanford University.

NASA's Gravity Probe B program is managed at the Marshall Space Flight Center. NASA's prime contractor for the mission, Stanford University in Stanford, Calif., conceived the experiment and is responsible for the design of the science instrument, as well as for mission operations and data analysis. A major subcontractor, Lockheed Martin of Sunnyvale, Calif., designed and built the spacecraft as well as portions of the science instrument.